I learnt this work from performances in English, first at the old Sadler's Wells, then in a memorable BBC TV production with the young Margaret Price as a superb Tatyana (why has she never recorded the role?), finally in Sir Peter Hall's staging at Covent Garden. So I broached this set with pleasurable nostalgia. How sensible in any case to record an English-speaking cast singing in the vernacular (thanks to Peter Moores's advocacy) rather than in Russian learnt by rote. As every single member makes the most of David Lloyd-Jones's familiar translation (slightly amended here), they communicate the meaning of the piece immediately to their unseen audience, at least those in the English-speaking world for whom the set is surely intended.
Its rightful hero is Thomas Hampson. Blessed with a baritone of ideal weight for Onegin, he sings the role with the sense of bon ton it requires. Tchaikovsky's grateful lines are firmly held, even caressed and filled with warm yet flexible and nicely coloured tone. When finally roused to genuine passion in Act 3, Hampson's Onegin adds an emotional thrust just right for the possessed man, even if, in that respect he isn't quite as seized by infatuation as Thomas Allen for Levine or Hvorostovsky for Bychkov.
He may be hindered there, in the final scene, by Dame Kiri's seeming unwillingness to go the whole way in emotional commitment. Hers is a curious performance that might with advantage have been caught ten years ago when she was singing the part at Covent Garden. Here she gives a carefully studied and crafted performance, often phrased with subtlety and enunciated with a feeling for the words (indeed, hers are as clear as everyone else's), but there is a kind of faux naif approach, a touch of archness to her portrayal as if she were deliberately trying to sound the young, ingenuous girl, particularly in the early scenes. The Letter scene seems to be put together piecemeal, wanting that passionate, impulsive sincerity of expression Focile (for Bychkov), even more the young Vishnevskaya (for Khaikin), brought to it. Despite a few worn patches in the lower part of the voice, there is much lovely singing here qua singing even when the soul of the part sometimes goes missing.
Neil Rosenshein once sang an almost ideal Lensky at Covent Garden (in 1986). Time passes and his tenor is no longer as fresh-sounding or easily produced, at least at the top, as it then was. Against that must be set as full an understanding of the part—he is the lovelorn poet to the life—as you'll find on disc, except from Lemeshev on the old Russian versions (Nebolsin, 1936; Khaikin, 1956), and many turns of phrase that are heart-stopping so that one can overlook the few grating notes.
For the rest I have nothing but praise. The young mezzo Patricia Bardon is a lively, rich-toned and eager Olga, one who very much relishes singing in her native tongue. So does Elizabeth Bainbridge: here at the very end of her career (she is about to retire) we at last have a fit memento of her art in a role, Filipyevna, that she often sang at Covent Garden with distinction. She is in excellent voice and characterizes the part with unforced dignity. John Connell is a model Gremin, singing his aria with just the grave, gentle ardour it calls for and placing the words ideally on his ingratiating tone without making a meal of them. Linda Finnie is equally praiseworthy as Larina. Gedda, once a fine Lensky, lavishes his skills and his still-strong voice on Triquet's couplets, shading the second to a piano where the first is sung forte.
It is good to have Mackerras's sane, secure and vital reading of the score enshrined on disc. He and his Welsh forces play alternately with vigour and sensitivity. The WNO Chorus is predictably excellent. Each scene is well timed and shaped in itself, but I sometimes felt a sense that the score had been put together in sections not quite conceived as a whole and that, when accompanying his diva, Sir Charles was being more cautious than elsewhere, to the detriment of the drama.
In spite of my few strictures, I hugely enjoyed listening to this well-recorded and prepared version nicely produced by John Fraser. It doesn't replace as first choice either the new Bychkov, which is just that much better played and more passionately conducted, or the Khaikin, the most authentic performance of all apart from the even older Nebolsin, but I would not willingly now be without the various constituents in this new set that are praised above, and there will be many, in any case, who will prefer the directness of hearing the piece sung in their own language: they will not be disappointed.'